Your Curve Card now works with Apple Pay

Curve Card launched Apple Pay integration yesterday.

This means that, at last, you can add your Curve Card to your iPhone or Apple Watch.

Whilst this was a slightly odd missing feature – Google Pay has worked with Curve for some time – it is also fair to say that it isn’t necessarily a key one.  The key selling point of Curve Card is that you can consolidate all of your existing credit cards onto it, meaning that you don’t need to carry them all around.  This isn’t a problem with Apple Pay, since you can add all of your existing cards anyway and it doesn’t make your phone any heavier.

The only obvious upside is if you have a Visa or Mastercard which does not work with Apple Pay.  You can now get around this by linking it to a Curve Card.  The same goes for any card you may have which does not support contactless payment, as Curve Card is contactless.  You can also route foreign currency payments via Curve to avoid the 3% FX fee on your underlying card.

You can learn more about Curve Card in our main reference article here.  Curve Card is FREE and, indeed, Curve will pay you £10 for trying it out if you use our link.

PS. As regular readers will know, you can no longer use Curve Card to pay HMRC for free. Unless you have Curve Metal at £14.99 per month, Curve now adds a 1.5% fee to your HMRC transactions. In virtually all scenarios, this means that it makes no sense to use Curve to pay your tax, even though you will receive receive points on the underlying Visa or MasterCard you link to Curve.

There is no Mastercard or Visa where the points are worth 1.5%.  You could make a case for the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard which earns 1.5 miles per £1, so you are ‘buying’ miles at 1p, but I still see that as a bit toppy.

Curve is now actively advertising on Google (bidding against the phrase ‘HMRC’) the ability to use it to circumvent the rules banning credit card payments.  Very odd.

---

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.